Fish Soup Read online

  I had moved out of my parent’s house months ago and was living with Milagros, a girl who sold alcohol in the duty-free shop and had put up a notice in the toilets: looking for a roommate, two-bed apartment near the airport. I liked the idea of living near the airport, so I could be 100% available for the airline. If someone was ill, I was there in five minutes to replace them. If a charter flight was leaving and they needed staff, I would volunteer myself. Every time a plane took off or landed, I knew about it.

  I liked the sound of the aeroplanes.

  On the third day of rain, I put on a raincoat and went to visit Gustavo, but it was Olga’s head that poked out of the door to the shack. Where’s Gustavo? And she said: he’s gone fishing. The sky was falling in sheets of water. I didn’t move. Olga emerged to stand in the doorway, revealing her naked body, dark and glossy, her magic button a tangled mat of hair.

  I left.

  I called my parents’ house, it felt like years since I’d heard from them. As soon as my mother started talking, I realised that everything was the same: she had fallen out with one of my aunts, because my aunt was a manipulator who liked to bleed my grandmother dry. Me: bleed her dry of what? Her: what do you think? My father had hired a new driver, because the last one had stolen from him. He’d taken three hundred thousand pesos and the spare tyre. Did you report it? No, what would be the point? It never does any good. Right. What about my brother? Out and about.

  The block of flats where I lived with Milagros was near the sea. When it rained, an eerie-sounding wind blew. Tony called me occasionally. I told him I didn’t want to see him. On one of those rainy nights, it was me who called him.

  Do you want to go and see a film? I don’t know, I don’t think so. Are you with someone? No. You’re with someone.

  Tony lived far from me, it would have taken almost an hour on the bus, but he took a taxi and arrived in twenty minutes. I was in the shower. He must have spent all his money for the week. Tony turned on a film on the TV in the living room, and Milagros shut herself away in her bedroom. See you tomorrow, she said. I came out in pyjamas, smelling of soap. Before I sat down, I went to the kitchen to get the Guatemalan rum that Milagros had brought home. I took a swig from the bottle and then poured a glass for Tony, who barely wet his lips with it. I sat down and immediately climbed on top of him. I had no idea what film he’d put on. The first time, I came. The second, he did. When we had finished, Tony said: marry me.

  I can’t. Why? Because of work. What’s that got to do with it? I’d leave you on your own all the time, and I’d get so jealous imagining that when I’m not there, you’d replace me with someone else. You’re irreplaceable. I am now, but when I leave you alone, you’ll realise I’m not. Let’s go to Canada. Canada is full of old people. Quit your job. Never. But why not? Never in a million years.

  He left.

  It was still raining. Out of the window, the lights in the street looked distorted. Across the street, there was a huge illuminated sign for a fried chicken restaurant, but that night it was a shapeless blur. I went over to the window, wiped it and looked down. Tony was there, standing on the corner, looking around the street, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened.

  I thought about opening the window and shouting to him to come back up. I thought about opening the window and shouting, Yes! But what I actually did was light a cigarette, and still watching him, I imagined my life with him. It went like this:

  It is raining. I leave the airport, heading for a tiny apartment in a neighbourhood miles away, overlooking a rotten swamp. I have plastic bags in my handbag to put on my feet when I get off the bus, so my heels don’t get stuck in the mud when I’m walking home. On the way to the building, I have to dodge kids screaming and splashing around on the pavements. I am deafened by the vallenato music booming out of the low, cramped houses, from which a sickly-yellow light seeps. It smells of fried food, it smells of rum, it smells of rotten swamp, it smells of poverty. Hi, sweetheart, Tony says, opening the door. In his arms is a small child, slurping at its own snot. Soon, that baby will be slurping at my tits. Then we eat a watery lentil stew, we go to bed and turn off the light. Tony would cling to my back like a limpet, his arm around my waist, and whisper in my ear: one day we’ll get out of here. Me: we’ll always be here, waiting for a hurricane to come.

  By the time I finished my cigarette, Tony was still there, but I wasn’t.

  8

  Johnny knew a guy. As simple as that. That’s how Johnny was, you’d say to him: I’d love to multiply my savings by a thousand. Him: I know a guy. I’d love to travel to Cuba, to buy some cigars and come back. What for? To sell them. I know a guy. I’d love to get a tattoo. Where? On the back of my neck. I know a guy. I’d love to stay here forever. And that’s when Johnny didn’t know anyone. He said: this is a very hard country. But he lived like a tycoon, he got a new car every six months and went on paying the same lease. He received unemployment benefit that nobody checked up on, and that was what paid for the motels where we fucked, or the lobster we ate at Key West, or the VIP passes for the salsa bars he took me to in Little Havana. Johnny lived off money from his wife – half gringa, half Ecuadorian – and he even bought designer underpants. He zealously fed his little American dream in fear that if he forgot to feed it one day, it would keel over in front of him like a starving baby bird.

  Maybe I should stop seeing you and find a gringo to marry, I’d say to him. And Johnny would lunge at me, push me against the wall and shove his hand up my skirt: come here, beibi. Because Johnny was a whore, he wanted to resolve everything in the bedroom. Let go of me, you bastard. I’d push him off me and leave.

  I was always in a bad mood on the way back and the Captain began to notice. Did you quarrel with your boyfriend? The Captain always spoke to me very formally. No, sir, I don’t have a boyfriend. What a waste. On that flight there were four air hostesses, two old ones and Susana and me. Susana insisted that the Captain was in love with me. I knew which part of me the Captain was in love with: he could barely tear his eyes off my ass. But he had nothing to offer me in return.

  Then, my brother struck gold. He wrote me an email telling me he was getting married: her name was Odina and she was Puerto Rican, but she lived in Los Angeles. He had met her online; as he didn’t have a visa, she had come to see him, and Bob’s your uncle, they sealed their love. He didn’t introduce me to her because I was flying, or so my mother had told him. He described her as beautiful, brown-skinned and slim, and she came with the right dowry: the green card. I called the airline, told them I was really ill and then shut myself away for three days to cry: 88, 87, 86… And that’s how I fell asleep, obsessing over my brother. I was sure the whole thing about pushing me to become an air hostess had been his strategy to get me away from the only computer in the house, where he chatted all day long, year after year, looking for a wife, until he stumbled upon that Puerto Rican bitch.

  They had a church wedding here, and a civil ceremony there. My brother, in his correspondence with her, had made out that he was incredibly religious. On Odina’s side, there was a large party of friends and relatives. Common as muck, the lot of them. On our side, we had some second cousins from a village. Also common as muck. They all had children, and they all dressed the same. In the church, a girl sat next to me and told me that when she grew up she was going to come to the city and work for a company. Her hair was combed in segments, hard and crispy with hair spray. I imagined her in the city, a few years older, working from sun-up to sun-down in a little stuffy office that she would travel to and from on the minibus. She would bring her lunch in a Tupperware box, and dye her hair with cheap blond dye that would turn orange in the sun, so she’d switch to a copper mahogany tone.

  The priest gave a sermon about good love, intended for procreation, and bad love, intended for enjoyment. Then an emaciated nun sang the Ave Maria.

  The celebration took place in a large, ramshackle old house in the city centre. Odina’s family paid for it, becau
se in line with tradition, the bride paid for the party and the groom paid for the honeymoon. There would not be a honeymoon right away because Odina had to go back to work. Odina was a nurse. Odina was far from “slim”. She was fat. Odina’s parents were classic “wannabe” types. So were mine, though they didn’t even know what it meant to be “wannabes”. That night, there were so many white fairy lights strung up around the terrace it was like being part of some Caribbean royalty. The L-shaped buffet table was overflowing with hundreds of hot and cold dishes: mainly seafood. Gustavo was the supplier, although my father hadn’t bought fish from him for years because his prices had gone up so much. They had invited Gustavo to the party, but he excused himself. I don’t go to parties, he said. Nobody insisted. It would have been awkward to explain the presence of that hairy old man, stinking of fish and all leathery from the sun, tucked away in a corner with his bottle of rum. And his black girlfriend.

  Didn’t you invite Olga? I asked my mother. Olga who? she said. Gustavo’s girlfriend. My mother had no idea who I was talking about.

  In the toilets they had all kinds of perfumes to overpower the smell of dancefloor sweat. On the tables were Polaroid cameras for the guests to use. On the dance floor there were tiny holes that pumped out a floral-scented mist. At midnight they let off fireworks spelling out the names of the bride and groom in the sky; followed by more which read Just Married, in English. A trio sang boleros, then an orchestra played and later, after the dinner, a DJ took over, flooding the elegant perfumed air of the celebration with reggaeton, which “Odi” was crazy about. Odi’s hips swayed like a poisonous snake, and yet my mother and father gazed at her like she was some kind of angelic apparition. Every so often they would let out a sigh and look at each other and nod, no doubt thinking: we’ve struck gold. Odina called them mummy this, daddy that, and she called me “sistah”. She threw the bouquet straight into my arms, but I stepped back out of the way, letting it fall to the floor. There followed a couple of bewildered seconds when everyone expected me to bend down and pick it up, but instead I turned and walked towards the door.

  Tony was just arriving: he’d said he wasn’t coming because he had to work late at the stationery shop. His uncle had made him a partner, big fucking deal. Like all the men, he was wearing white trousers and a coloured shirt – turquoise, in his case. He had gelled his hair and combed it back, like mobsters do. He had a goatee, and although he said hello and kissed me on the cheek, he gave me a resentful look. I asked him why he was arriving so late and he said: I just finished work and thought, why not go and congratulate my buddy? Apparently, they were buddies now, but when Tony was going out with me, my brother thought he was a failure, a fokin’ loozer, a small-town waste of space, a broke guy who’d never give me what I deserved. What did I deserve? My brother reeled off some things – things I couldn’t remember now – while I traced lines between them, sewing them together, drawing a tangled web.

  Aren’t you coming in? Tony was still standing at the door, looking at me. From inside, my brother’s deep, husky voice drifted out, singing I want to tell you everything I like about you… You missed the photo for the newspaper, I said to him. He didn’t reply, just clenched his teeth.

  Julián had dated the girl in charge of the social section of the paper; apparently, she had promised him a half-page spread. This was no mean feat, as there were queues of people waiting to get their faces in there.

  On the night of the wedding, this was the photo:

  In the centre, the bride and groom in pure white apart from Odi’s bright red lips. Then the women, two mothers and a grandmother, ancient divas in their organza dresses printed with wild flowers. The two fathers, in garish shirts: one parrot green, one bright orange. The best man, Julián, accompanied as always by his obscene biceps, this time with some scrawny eye-candy hanging off them, dressed in yellow. The bridesmaids: on one side was Odi’s friend Tanya, a smoking hot Cuban in a sparkly top with a plunging neckline, very “bling”, and on the other side was me, dressed all in black like I was at a funeral, champagne in hand, looking anywhere but at the lens.

  The day the newspaper came out, there was the photo, but in black and white. It seemed Julián didn’t have enough sway to get a page in colour.

  Let’s go in, insisted Tony. I turned my back on him and lit a cigarette.

  The sound of his new shoes going into the party, moving away from me yet again, made my belly ache with sadness. But not for me, or for him; but for the fishermen’s beach where we used to screw, which was now a hotel. And for the terrace of the hotel where we used to screw, which was no longer there. For the wasted years.

  After that night I never saw him again. Or at least, not until much later.

  9

  Johnny knew a guy who brought merchandise down from the United States. You ordered the product on Amazon, giving the address of the guy there, and he came down with his suitcases like a tourist and didn’t declare anything. He charged by the weight of the package, not the volume, and according to Johnny that was a major advantage, one which I couldn’t care less about. He was known as Santa Claus because the guy mostly carried toys for children for Christmas; they were much cheaper up there. And now, this guy that Johnny knew had a new business and that was what he wanted to talk to me about. The guy rents himself out as a relative of pregnant women, Johnny said. I don’t understand the business, I said. We were in a snack bar in Kendall, eating hot wings. My fingers were slathered in red sauce, and I had to lick them to stop it dripping everywhere.

  Johnny ordered two more beers. The snack bar was almost empty: just the owner, a nice guy from the Dominican Republic, his daughter, who was wearing a polka dot miniskirt that was far too short on her, considering her age and shape; and a young couple in the corner with their tongues down each other’s throats. When the daughter brought over the beers, Johnny – after a long look at the miniskirt – explained the guy’s business to me. He brings women over here to give birth, he pretends he’s an uncle or a cousin of theirs, and he looks after them in his house for the last three months of the pregnancy, because after that they aren’t allowed to travel. He gets a doctor friend to see them during that time and then he takes them to the hospital to give birth. And then he vanishes, so they can’t link him to it. So, what’s the point? I asked him. What do you think? said Johnny, the kid is born a gringo, and then they automatically give you nationality. He winked at me, which reminded me of my father. You bastard, I said to him. Him: don’t say that Johnny doesn’t love you. I sat on his lap and kissed him eagerly: Johnny loves me, I said into his ear. The girl in the miniskirt was watching us out of the corner of her eye, twirling a lock of hair around her forefinger. I asked Johnny for the guy’s number.

  When I got back, I found Gustavo alone, peeling prawns at his worktable. There was a strong breeze, the tarpaulin roof was flapping around. Where’s Olga? At the market. Right. I stretched out in the hammock and after a while it occurred to me to ask about the children. What children? Don’t you have children? He remained lost in thought for a minute, then said:

  In Bolivia, I lived in a house with thirteen people. The landlady was a woman called Rosita.

  And you had a child with Rosita?

  No. In that house, every night somebody would cook dinner, we all ate together and sang songs, and some of them got naked and fucked on the floor. But I didn’t. And neither did Rosita. Rosita took off her blouse and made me touch her breasts and tell her what I felt. I felt scared, but I never told her that.

  What did you tell her?

  I told her: your breasts are like white seashells.

  Right.

  The guy that Johnny knew was called Ever and he was a real ugly so-and-so. He weighed about two hundred kilos and his face was mottled with patches of vitiligo. He charged a shitload of money, but he was a sure thing, he said, not like those guys who promise you a green card and you wind up with a Blockbuster membership. How much do you have left? What, money? No, I mean of the pregnancy.
I lied: not much. He told me to think about it and to tell Johnny if I wanted to go ahead. The guy spoke in a whisper because it was a delicate subject, he said. I had to lean closer to him over the table and inhale his breath. It smelled like someone who had just eaten a mountain of sardines. When he finally finished talking, he heaved his enormous body up and dragged it to the door of the Denny’s; he reached his arms up in a lazy stretch, and tyres of fat rippled over the top of his waistband. I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand one day in that guy’s care. Anyway. The plan was a non-starter for me. Not the getting pregnant part – a kid could be made in any airport toilet, but because of the money. As always, the money.

  Why so pensive? the Captain said to me. We were in the airline lounge, waiting for them to finish cleaning the plane. No reason, I replied. Susana was not on the flight that day, the others were there, and Flor: ugly, bitter, haggard Flor. She even walked funny; nobody could get their heads round how she’d become an air hostess. The Captain said, would you like to have a drink with me one day? He looked into my eyes, but only because I was sitting down. Flor cleared her throat and left the tiny room, her steps like a crippled heron. Out of the window, a plane was landing, the sky glowed with blue and violet hues. I don’t know, I said to the Captain, holding his gaze. Maybe.

  10

  It was Odina who got pregnant and gave birth and, as my parents didn’t have a visa to go to the US, my brother, the Puerto Potty and their kid came down as soon as possible so they could meet their grandchild. Odina had put on about a hundred kilos and still insisted on calling me “sistah”. The child looked just like her; they named him Simón. They slept in my brother’s old bedroom and the baby slept in mine. The walls had been painted blue and on the bedside table there was a basket filled with little blue organza bags containing blue sweets, with “Baby boy” written on the wrapper. A souvenir of your visit to see the baby. I saw them the first day and then I disappeared. I told them I had two flights back to back, and a long stopover in Seattle. Nobody seemed to be listening.